Downloading Music

Four men behind the popular file-sharing website The Pirate Bay went on trial today accused of helping millions of users worldwide break copyright law.

The Stockholm trial is being followed by film and music labels and file-sharers around the world as it could determine to what point copyright infringement becomes illegal.

The defendants are accused of breaking Swedish copyright law by helping internet users download protected music, films and computer games.

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, 28, Peter Sunde, 30 Fredrik Neij, 30, and Carl Lundstrom, 48, face up to two years in prison if they are convicted. They all claim they have not done anything illegal.

The Pirate Bay does not host copyrighted content, but directs users to the material.http://www.breakingnews.ie/World/mhsnsnkfqlcw/

GuestGuest

Subject: Re: Downloading Music Tue Feb 17, 2009 12:28 am

shutuplaura wrote:

studiorat wrote:

evercloserunion wrote:

I still download music though, with little regard to the legal status of my actions, or what it's doing to a poor little multi-millionaire musician. As a law student and prospective lawyer I suppose I should know better, but thankfully I am for the free flow of ideas and the toning down of copyright law so the cognitive dissonance is reduced for me.

Poor multi-millionaire musician my ass! Lawyers make much more than the average musician, you should remember that next time you steal other peoples work off the internet.

If music is being given away that's all well and good. If people go to the trouble of working hard and paying money to make a recording it's use should be paid for period.

It sickens me to see people using the "free flow of ideas" argument as an issue against musical copyright and musicians being paid for their work.

The vast vast majority of music on these sites has been created by musicians who are or become very wealthy because of their work. Its simple - if you like something even slightly obscure, there simply won't be a file available for sharing. So the chances that you are acutally depriving someone of their bread and butter money is highly unlikely. these people still make money from live performance - and this free/flow you slag off is advertising for these performances. To be honest I don't bat an eyelid thinking about 'poor' musicians. Who says they have to be much better paid than the average joe anyway.

I reiterate - www.mininova.org is a great way of getting music for free, albiet illegally. I urge people to deprive millionaire musicians and record industry types of a few bob and spend the money attending live music events and supporting real music. (preferably not stadium/point depot syle concerts by bored wealthy muscians but far be it from me to judge)

"Who says they have to be much better paid than the average joe anyway."

Absolutely. If you compare the work effort involved then there's no moral argument to suggest they should be paid indefinitely. I mean artists like Bono, Cliff Richard, Paul McCartney and Elton John etc lobbied recently to try and extend the copyright on sound recordings to 95 years from the current 50! *

*They live like aristocrats. Now they think like them

The trouble started when they quit Carnaby Street for the mansion lifestyle. Now Bono and co have lost the plot on copyrighthttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/dec/09/comment.music

Quote :

There is a moment in the spoof rock documentary This is Spinal Tap when a reporter poses a crushingly direct question to the eponymous band's lead singer at the wrap party for their disastrous US tour. "Is this, like, your last waltz?" he wonders. "Or are you going to milk it for a few more years in Europe?"

This vignette was called to mind by the full-page advertisement placed by 4,500 artists in Thursday's Financial Times that petitioned the government to extend the copyright on sound recordings to 95 years from the current 50. Anyone who assumed that this was these musicians' last waltz - or perhaps an elaborate ploy by Kiri Te Kanawa to get her name in the papers again - should set their faces to stunned. Now that the government has accepted the Gowers review recommendation that changing the law will give little public benefit, this ragtag army of multimillionaires and wronged creatives will be milking this one all the way to the European courts, even if the suggestion that in 95 years anyone will be dusting down a Katie Melua recording seems a triumph of optimism over sanity.

It was, of course, barely a fortnight ago that readers of these pages were pleased to take a lesson in political theory from my temporary Guardian colleague Mick Hucknall, the lead singer of Simply Red and a signatory of the aforementioned ad, who opened a presumably self-parodic opinion piece with the statement "copyright is fundamentally socialist". Mick then contrived to conflate notions of intellectual property - and there's something about "property" that grates with our fifth-form Marxist's thesis - with solid leftwing values, though I'm afraid I'd rather lost track of his point by the second mention of "the free flow of ideas", and realised we were being asked to conceive of a Beverley Sisters track as such.

Extend Mick's poignantly confused argument to drug copyrighting - where the 20-year limit on monopolies has resulted in enormously beneficial ideas trafficking - and readers who would be rightly insulted by the blindingly obvious flaws in his logic being explored at any length have its neatest demolition. Individual losses are infinitely outweighed by benefits to the whole.

Unfortunately, there are people over the age of seven who listen to Mick. He recently granted an interview in which he claimed: "Tony Blair's a friend. I've said to him, 'You should have waited on Iraq.' He listens."

Other prime ministerial mates on the list of signatories include Cliff Richard - but it is when one notes the presence of Paul McCartney, whose personal wealth is estimated at over £1bn, that the penny, or rather several trillion of them, drops. We are dealing with big business here, not penurious session musicians so often gestured towards as the potential beneficiaries of an extension. The four record giants - Warners, EMI, Sony-BMG and Universal - own the vast majority of the recording copyrights in question, and it is they who will reap almost all the royalties. Their protectionist drive to extend the life of their cash cow is what the rather more realistic Dave Rowntree of Blur denounced as "industry pressure to rob society of its inheritance".

As for fellow signatory Bono ... That this increasingly preposterous man should have spoken out on the business is hardly a surprise - the subject on which he cannot be persuaded to give his opinion has yet to be found. But why anyone indulges his pious preaching on this or Africa, when he recently lavished huge sums on pursuing a court case against a former stylist to his band to ensure the return of a hat, some trousers and a sweatshirt - "memorabilia", as he'd have it - is almost beyond comprehension.......

GuestGuest

Subject: Re: Downloading Music Tue Feb 17, 2009 1:04 am

50 years eh - that would be from the musics realese I suppose - the Beatles stuff will prettyu soon start to loose its copyright protection. In a world where someone who's been dead for 30 years can still make it into the top 5 highest paid entertainers in the world this would be a huge loss of income.

GuestGuest

Subject: Re: Downloading Music Tue Feb 17, 2009 1:50 am

shutuplaura wrote:

50 years eh - that would be from the musics realese I suppose - the Beatles stuff will prettyu soon start to loose its copyright protection. In a world where someone who's been dead for 30 years can still make it into the top 5 highest paid entertainers in the world this would be a huge loss of income.

Very much so. Although not a loss to the original author, in the main, but to his or her offspring....as in, the Peaches Geldofs of this world.

Basically those that would, in the main, loose out would be the Peaches Geldofs, and the big music corporations. Everyone else would by and large benefit.

Somehow I just don't it'd be a terribly unpopular policy when it is, just-not-necessary, to have to pay them for 50 to 95 years to produce good music. I think music will still be produced without such crazy remuneration structures and strictures. Better music.

Speaking of that work effort involved, the counter argument reminds me of that scene in Zoolander.

Effort in thinking up a copyrighted 'Blue Steel' look versus a working week down the coal mine......

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0196229/quotes

Quote :

[after being in a coal mine for a day]Derek Zoolander: [high-pitched cough] ... I think I'm getting the Black Lung, Pop. It's not very well ventilated down there.

Larry Zoolander: For Christ's sake, Derek, you've been down there one day. Talk to me in thirty years.

GuestGuest

Subject: Re: Downloading Music Tue Feb 17, 2009 2:06 pm

Eh, AFAIK copyright lasts until 70 years after the author's death?

GuestGuest

Subject: Re: Downloading Music Tue Feb 17, 2009 2:09 pm

evercloserunion wrote:

Eh, AFAIK copyright lasts until 70 years after the author's death?

Correct, it was an EC Directive in 2006.

GuestGuest

Subject: Re: Downloading Music Tue Feb 17, 2009 8:08 pm

Auditor #9 wrote:

Internet piracy test case starts - Breaking News

Four men behind the popular file-sharing website The Pirate Bay went on trial today accused of helping millions of users worldwide break copyright law.

The Stockholm trial is being followed by film and music labels and file-sharers around the world as it could determine to what point copyright infringement becomes illegal.

The defendants are accused of breaking Swedish copyright law by helping internet users download protected music, films and computer games.

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, 28, Peter Sunde, 30 Fredrik Neij, 30, and Carl Lundstrom, 48, face up to two years in prison if they are convicted. They all claim they have not done anything illegal.

The Pirate Bay does not host copyrighted content, but directs users to the material.http://www.breakingnews.ie/World/mhsnsnkfqlcw/

Good luck to them. If somebody tells you a place where it is easy to steal turf because the owner of the turf told him about a previous robbery and then you help yourself to some of that turf. Who is guilty? The guy who told you..I think not

GuestGuest

Subject: Re: Downloading Music Wed Mar 11, 2009 6:38 pm

The French government has been accused of "Big Brother" tactics over an anti-piracy bill which aims to punish people who repeatedly illegally download music and films by cutting off their internet access for up to a year.

...

But although the senate has passed the bill, a heated row over civil liberties is expected as parliament debates the law this week.